European Global Navigation Satellite System

E-GNSS Accelerator Boosting Market Uptake of Galileo

Moving beyond idea conception – right into incubation and development phases of true commercial ventures! This is the aim of the very first European Accelerator programme for Galileo: The E-GNSS Accelerator provides dedicated support for startups using Global Satellite Navigation System (GNSS) for business ideas. It boosts the European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC) prize pool with additional EUR 1.28 million over the next three years to the next level! For the first time ever startups from EU as well as EEA and ENP countries can benefit from hands-on advice and expert service powered by the best European space stakeholders to help shape the future of Galileo with their business cases. This unique programme is funded by the European Commission’s DG Grow and organised by AZO.

Valuable Benefits for Space StartupsThe brand-new E-GNSS Accelerator offers ESNC participants even more incredible prizes and more dedicated support than ever! This year, the participants of the ESNC await additional prizes worth EUR 0.5 million as well as the first E-GNSS Bootcamp in 2017 (eligible to the top 10 ranked winners).

In order to drive the market uptake of the most promising ideas and the achievement of measurable results even more, the top 10 ESNC winners will get the chance to pitch alongside the joint Awards Ceremony of the ESNC and Copernicus Masters on 7 November 2017 in Tallinn, Estonia in front of a high-ranking expert panel. The top three pitching startups per year will get access to dedicated incubation programmes at their preferred incubation centre of the ESNC network all across Europe. The three incubations are valued at EUR 62,000.

Uniqueness of the E-GNSS AcceleratorThis innovative programme provides a customised co-financing scheme for up to 30 Regional Prizes of the ESNC per year. Participants in the partner regions will highly benefit from the programme through the tremendously increased ESNC prize pool.

The E-GNSS Accelerator runs for three years and will directly support the winners of the ESNC 2017, 2018 and 2019. It supports entrepreneurs and startups from EU28, the EEA and ENP countries to move beyond the initial idea and provide tailored business incubation, in order to ultimately push economic growth for Europe. This initiative creates numerous benefits for ESNC participants taking their business ideas to a whole new level.

E-GNSS Accelerator ObjectivesThe Accelerator programme’s ultimate goal is to foster the Galileo market uptake of high technologies in Europe on a broader scale, while highlighting the great importance of the regional dimension. The principle objective is to co-finance the operation of a prize awarding mechanism and incubation/acceleration support for innovative applications based on Galileo/EGNOS. At the dawn of Galileo, this project accompanies entrepreneurs and startups all along the value chain to implement the EU space strategy.